Helen Mirren has had a long and distinguished career, and she discusses it along with her new film “Hitchcock” in an excellent interview with The Daily Beast.

Earlier in her career, however, Mirren wasn’t treated so regally. After causing waves as a lascivious muse to an older painter in 1969’s Age of Consent, she was cruelly objectified by the British press for her looks and sensual onscreen persona. The coup de grâce came in 1975 when, during a TV interview with famed British host Michael Parkinson, she was subjected to a barrage of sexist comments and even told she projected a “sluttish eroticism.”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she says. “You just had to put up with it. It was tough when I was younger; it was like an albatross on my back but I just found a way to navigate it. I thought, ‘They can think what they like and I’ll show them through the work that I do,’ which is what I did.”